Less than two weeks before my 34th birthday, I bought pots. Most people were amazed that I did not previously own pots, but that was before I explained that I had never used my oven, and used my stovetop for my dishrack.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I started cooking 30-something years ago. When I was 14, 15, I was a short-order cook in a snack bar. That was at a place called the Gran Centurions. It was an Italian-American swim club my parents belonged to.
I could cook from quite an early age - purely because I liked it.
When I was about nine years old, I announced to my mother that I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner. And I went to the library and got this whole pile of books. I'd love to say it all turned out great. It didn't. But, sort of, from that point on, whenever there was serious cooking at home, I was the one who did it.
My grandmother's house was just a place of comfort. I mean, I remember going in there, and the kitchen always had pots cooking with the lids were always bump, bump, bump, bump, bubbling, you know?
I bent my head over a stove in my early 20s and picked it up in my 30s.
I didn't leave home until 27. I was an only child raised in Philadelphia by my mother and grandmother. My grandmother controlled the stove. She made a lot of potato meals - mashed potato, potato souffle, potato pancakes. When we didn't have electricity, we ate romantically by candlelight.
I was 25 years old when I arrived in D.C. It was just myself and two people who worked and helped me in the kitchen. I was only cooking for three people most of the time.
You know, when you get your first asparagus, or your first acorn squash, or your first really good tomato of the season, those are the moments that define the cook's year. I get more excited by that than anything else.
My grandmother died when my mother was just 11 years old, and consequently, my mother never learned how to cook particularly well.
I started cooking when I was 18 years old, and now I have restaurants all over the world.